From co-production of knowledge to a participatory governance concept: a research design focusing on knowledge practices in flood risk management and disaster risk reduction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ida Wallin
Keyword(s):  
Risk Management ◽  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Flood Risk ◽  
Disaster Risk Reduction ◽  
Disaster Risk ◽  
Flood Risk Management ◽  
Participatory Governance ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Practices

<p>Knowledge has been shown to be more effectively implemented in practice when produced in collaboration between researchers and other stakeholders as the co-produced knowledge is more likely to be accepted and found relevant. Knowledge co-production processes have however been found guilty of depoliticizing and hiding political struggles to the end of reinforcing existing unequal power relations and prevent broad societal transformation from taking place. From this perspective, knowledge co-production can come into conflict with participatory governance that focuses on the empowerment and capacity building of actors, social justice and advocacy. In this presentation I take a closer look at this conflictual perspective and propose a research focus on knowledge practices for exploring and analyzing participatory governance options for flood risk management (FRM) and disaster risk reduction (DRR). I do this by exemplifying and presenting a research design developed within the newly started PARADeS-project.</p><p>The PARADeS-project is a research project led by German research institutions in close collaboration with partners in Ghana and with the overall aim to contribute to enhancing Ghana’s national flood risk and disaster management strategy. Co-production of knowledge is foreseen to take place in several workshops including collaborative modelling, scenario- and policy back-casting exercises. One of the planned project outputs is a concept of participatory governance in FRM and DRR based on the findings from a stakeholder analysis, a policy network analysis and a participatory assessment of different policy options.</p><p>In this project context a research focus on stakeholders’ knowledge practices can be used to inform and improve the participatory governance concept and facilitate its implementation process. Knowledge is used by stakeholders as a powerful resource in suggesting certain policy options and convincing others of their necessity. Knowledge practices entail how actors use knowledge to argue, convince and make decisions. Through knowledge practices, stakeholders decide what knowledge to base decisions on and how to convince others of their position using that knowledge. What knowledge becomes accepted as legitimate in such interactions - often deliberative settings - can be decisive for the acceptability of any policy option. It is therefore important to study not only the different types of stakeholders and technical options for FRM and DRR, but the interaction between stakeholders and how they use information and co-create knowledge - the knowledge practices.</p><p>Within the presentation I discuss the proposed research design for how to study knowledge practices and how to make use of these findings when going from research project and co-production of knowledge to a concept of participatory governance in flood risk management and disaster risk reduction in Ghana.</p>

International Efforts Toward Robustness of Flood Management

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 1202-1210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masahiko Murase ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Risk Management ◽  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Flood Risk ◽  
Disaster Risk Reduction ◽  
Flood Management ◽  
Disaster Risk ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Development Goals

Practical flood management depends on the extent to which the cost of taking risks is shared in a society among governments, interested parties, communities, and individuals. Risk management calls for identification, analysis, assessment, control, avoidance, minimization, or elimination of unacceptable risks through policies, procedures, and practices under three strategies for risk management: reduction, retention, and transfer. Flood risk management under a variety of uncertainties, such as the impacts of climate change, favors the implementation of flexible and adaptive management in top-down and bottom-up approaches. The former uses projections of global or spatially downscaled models to drive resource models and project impacts. The latter uses policy or planning tools to identify which changes in climate would most threaten their long-range plans or operations. Particularly for the bottom-up approaches, appropriate indicators that directly assess the flood risk of each area are essential. This study analyzes the international efforts of robust flood management from the top-down and bottom-up approaches, such as insurance and indicator and management systems, to seek incentive mechanisms for risk management. To implement international commitments, such as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, there are gaps in implementing a holistic approach to flood management strategies and, therefore, mainstreaming disaster risk reduction and addressing sustainable development. The robustness of flood management requires the capacity-building necessary to understand and sufficiently respond to flood hazards, vulnerabilities, and benefits as an important evolutionary link in the transition between implementing global development goals, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, and disaster risk-reduction activities. There are three challenges: data and information infrastructure, inter-disciplinary knowledge development, and trans-disciplinary policy.

scholarly journals Health Workforce Development in Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management: The Need for Evidence-Based Recommendations

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (7) ◽  
pp. 3382
Author(s):  
Kevin K. C. Hung ◽  
Sonoe Mashino ◽  
Emily Y. Y. Chan ◽  
Makiko K. MacDermot ◽  
Satchit Balsari ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Risk Management ◽  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Workforce Development ◽  
Health Workforce ◽  
Disaster Risk Reduction ◽  
Disaster Risk ◽  
Disaster Risk Management ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Literature Reviews

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 placed human health at the centre of disaster risk reduction, calling for the global community to enhance local and national health emergency and disaster risk management (Health EDRM). The Health EDRM Framework, published in 2019, describes the functions required for comprehensive disaster risk management across prevention, preparedness, readiness, response, and recovery to improve the resilience and health security of communities, countries, and health systems. Evidence-based Health EDRM workforce development is vital. However, there are still significant gaps in the evidence identifying common competencies for training and education programmes, and the clarification of strategies for workforce retention, motivation, deployment, and coordination. Initiated in June 2020, this project includes literature reviews, case studies, and an expert consensus (modified Delphi) study. Literature reviews in English, Japanese, and Chinese aim to identify research gaps and explore core competencies for Health EDRM workforce training. Thirteen Health EDRM related case studies from six WHO regions will illustrate best practices (and pitfalls) and inform the consensus study. Consensus will be sought from global experts in emergency and disaster medicine, nursing, public health and related disciplines. Recommendations for developing effective health workforce strategies for low- and middle-income countries and high-income countries will then be disseminated.

Flood risk assessment for Ecuador 

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melisa Mena-Benavides ◽  
Manuel Urrutia ◽  
Konstantin Scheffczyk ◽  
Angel A. Valdiviezo-Ajila ◽  
Jhoyzett Mendoza ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Flood Risk ◽  
Disaster Risk Reduction ◽  
Disaster Risk ◽  
Flood Frequency ◽  
Flood Risk Assessment ◽  
Essential Information ◽  
Synthetic Aperture Radar Data ◽  
Ecological Regions

<p>Understanding disaster risk is the first priority for action of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) and is the essential information needed to guide disaster governance and achieve disaster risk reduction. Flooding is a natural hazard that causes the highest number of affected people due to disasters. In Ecuador from 1970 to 2019 flooding caused the highest amount of loss and damage to housing, and from 2016 to 2019 there were 1263 flood events reported. However, the differentiated impacts in flood exposed areas and what can be done to reduce risk and its impacts are still not well understood. In this research, we explored the different dimensions of flood risk, namely hazard, exposure, and vulnerability, and investigated the drivers of risk in different ecological regions of Ecuador. The assessment was conducted at the parish level, the smallest administrative scale, for three selected provinces of Bolivar, Los Ríos, and Napo, representing not only the country’s three main ecological regions but also commonly affected territories due to flooding. Using an automated flood detection procedure based on Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar data, flood hazard information was derived from flood frequency and flood depth for the years 2017, 2018, and 2019. The drivers of exposure and vulnerability were derived from scientific literature and further evaluated and complemented during a participatory workshop with over 50 local experts from the different regions. Centered on this exercise, an indicator library was created to inform the data selection from various sources and provides the basis for deriving a spatially explicit flood risk assessment using an indicator-based approach. Impact data are available to validate the risk assessment at the parish level and with this reveal key drivers of flood risk in different ecological regions of Ecuador. This information will provide the basis to derive targeted measures for disaster risk reduction.</p>

scholarly journals Traditional and Local Knowledge Practices for Disaster Risk Reduction in Northern Ghana

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 825 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nsioh Macnight Ngwese ◽  
Osamu Saito ◽  
Akiko Sato ◽  
Yaw Agyeman Boafo ◽  
Godfred Jasaw
Keyword(s):  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Local Knowledge ◽  
Disaster Risk Reduction ◽  
Disaster Risk ◽  
Northern Ghana ◽  
Knowledge Practices

Risk Management, Response, Relief, Recovery, Reconstruction, and Future Disaster Risk Reduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 95-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amod M. Dixit ◽  
Surya N. Shrestha ◽  
Ramesh Guragain ◽  
Bishnu H. Pandey ◽  
Khadga S. Oli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Risk Management ◽  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Disaster Risk Reduction ◽  
Disaster Risk

scholarly journals Systemic Flood Risk Management: The Challenge of Accounting for Hydraulic Interactions

Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 2530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessio Ciullo ◽  
Karin M. De Bruijn ◽  
Jan H. Kwakkel ◽  
Frans Klijn
Keyword(s):  
Risk Management ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Flood Risk ◽  
Decision Criterion ◽  
Current Approach ◽  
Flood Risk Management ◽  
Risk Distribution ◽  
False Sense ◽  
Risk Reduction Measures

Rivers typically flow through multiple flood-protected areas which are clearly interconnected, as risk reduction measures taken at one area, e.g., heightening dikes or building flood storage areas, affect risk elsewhere. We call these interconnections ‘hydraulic interactions’. The current approach to flood risk management, however, neglects hydraulic interactions for two reasons: They are uncertain and, furthermore, considering them would require the design of policies not only striving for risk reduction, but also accounting for risk transfers across flood-protected areas. In the present paper, we compare the performance of policies identified according to the current approach with those of two alternative formulations: One acknowledging hydraulic interactions and the other also including an additional decision criterion to account for equity in risk distribution across flood-protected areas. Optimal policies are first identified under deterministic hydraulic interactions, and, next, they are stress-tested under uncertainty. We found that the current approach leads to a false sense of equal risk distribution. It does, however, perform efficiently when a risk-averse approach towards uncertain hydraulic interactions is taken. Accounting for hydraulic interactions in the design of policies, instead, increases efficiency and both efficiency and equity when hydraulic interactions are considered deterministically and as uncertain, respectively.

Hydrodynamic Modeling of Urban Flood Flows and Disaster Risk Reduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brett F. Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Flood Risk ◽  
Disaster Risk Reduction ◽  
Disaster Risk ◽  
Accurate Approximation ◽  
Modeling Tools ◽  
Flood Simulation ◽  
Urban Flood ◽  
Flood Model ◽  
Flood Flows

Communities facing urban flood risk have access to powerful flood simulation software for use in disaster-risk-reduction (DRR) initiatives. However, recent research has shown that flood risk continues to escalate globally, despite an increase in the primary outcome of flood simulation: increased knowledge. Thus, a key issue with the utilization of urban flood models is not necessarily development of new knowledge about flooding, but rather the achievement of more socially robust and context-sensitive knowledge production capable of converting knowledge into action. There are early indications that this can be accomplished when an urban flood model is used as a tool to bring together local lay and scientific expertise around local priorities and perceptions, and to advance improved, target-oriented methods of flood risk communication. The success of urban flood models as a facilitating agent for knowledge coproduction will depend on whether they are trusted by both the scientific and local expert, and to this end, whether the model constitutes an accurate approximation of flood dynamics is a key issue. This is not a sufficient condition for knowledge coproduction, but it is a necessary one. For example, trust can easily be eroded at the local level by disagreements among scientists about what constitutes an accurate approximation. Motivated by the need for confidence in urban flood models, and the wide variety of models available to users, this article reviews progress in urban flood model development over three eras: (1) the era of theory, when the foundation of urban flood models was established using fluid mechanics principles and considerable attention focused on development of computational methods for solving the one- and two-dimensional equations governing flood flows; (2) the era of data, which took form in the 2000s, and has motivated a reexamination of urban flood model design in response to the transformation from a data-poor to a data-rich modeling environment; and (3) the era of disaster risk reduction, whereby modeling tools are put in the hands of communities facing flood risk and are used to codevelop flood risk knowledge and transform knowledge to action. The article aims to inform decision makers and policy makers regarding the match between model selection and decision points, to orient the engineering community to the varied decision-making and policy needs that arise in the context of DRR activities, to highlight the opportunities and pitfalls associated with alternative urban flood modeling techniques, and to frame areas for future research.

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